3D monitor and 3D TV support (anamorphic stereo pair mode, shutter glasses mode)
3D anaglyph glasses support
Full joystick and gamepads support, multiple devices allowed
Animated procedural stellar corona
New star rendering
Night textures on planets: city lights, lava
Thermal lighting of a planet and its clouds based on: tidal heating, solar heating, young age
Volcano with lava flows
Melted lava planets and moons
Updated soundtracks
Ability to change some measurement units: parsec to light year, kilometer to mile, Kelvin to Celsius and Fahrenheit
Hapke BDRF: opposition effect and zero-phase glare on dusty planets, planet script parameters to control the effect
Planetary system chart mode: compare size of planets, moons and stars in the system
Space ships:
Added option for multiple preset cameras for spacecraft
Enabled retro engines
New ship models
Astronomy:
ESI value now uses average planet surface temperature and doesn't change with time
Improved solar spots
Updated textures for many Solar system objects
Added accurate rings to the asteroid/centaur Chariklo
New procedural clouds texture
Updated brown dwarf appearance
New pink atmosphere model for brown dwarves and some planets
New physical model of planetary atmospheres (2-layered: adiabatic troposphere and isothermal stratosphere)
Elevations on gas giants are counted from the atmosphere level with pressure of 1 atmosphere (~1 bar)
Procedural generation of orbital ascending node in the catalog system for planets with unknown ascending node, based on planets with known ascending node
Improved planet temperature calculation: it now takes into account the internal and tidal heating
Glowing hot planets illuminates neighbouring objects
More accurate probabilities for generation of white dwarves, neutron stars, and black holes
Red giants now have 100% probability of hot planets
Icy moons smaller than 400 km and rocky moons smaller than 600 km are classified as asteroids and dwarf moons
Improved ice specular on terras and deserts
Large scale albedo variations on planet surface
Computing snow altitude based on atmosphere model
Increased level of detail of asteroids
New planet script parameter "Panspermia", for specifying that life did not originate on that world
"Life origin" field in the Wiki describes how life originated on that world
Dwarf moon names are changed to a form like "3.D4"
More realistic generation of planets density
Interface:
Improved quality of black hole and warp field distortion effect
Animated Selection pointer
Simple GUI editor (debug feature)
Atmospheric pressure and air temperature at the user's location is displayed in the object's info panel and in the Wiki
Wiki pages update automatically after changing the selected object
Wiki pages don't switch after changing the selected object or Wiki opened/closed
Wiki window is now more compact
Ability to select the screenshot image format in the Player settings menu
Main menu scales to any screen resolution
Filter by planet and star parameters in the Star browser
Updated interface texture
Updated toolbars appearance
Lock button on bottom toolbars now have 3 states: lock, half-hide, and hide
Added Display settings and Main Menu buttons to the left toolbar
Updated ship control panel
View direction altitude in the Fish Eye mode can be configured
Selection now work in the Fish Eye mode
New texture-based mouse cursors
Many visual improvements to the Map Mode
Expanded Display settings menu with controls for projection and 3D mode
Expanded Controls settings menu, with ability to customize all mouse and joysticks axes and all joysticks buttons
Brown dwarves size in a Solar system browser is in a planets size scale, not a stars one
Engine:
Many optimizations in the engine core
Upgraded memory manager
Some shaders are rewritten to the GLSL 3.3 core profile
Reduced number of planet shaders
Forced HDR mode and Bloom effect
Optimized lens flare code
More precise LOD setting for planets
Implemented the pak file system (zip archives)
Default texture packs and addons are now in pak files
Implemented separate texture sets for RGB and Alpha or higher and lower byte of elevation map for planets
Time stamps printed in the log
Settings for minimum distance for procedural stars and brown dwarves added to the config
Ability to edit a barycenter parameter in the Planet editor
Console variables to control the mouse cursor: "HardwareCursor" and "HideCursor"
Surface color parameters for gas giants and brown dwarves are renamed to colorLayer0 ... colorLayer7
Palettes for gas giants and ice giants are split into 7 ranges according to their temperature class
Palettes for brown dwarves are split into 3 ranges according to their spectral type (L, T, Y)
Swapped neg_z and pos_z faces in the Export Skybox function
Added the entire ship model rotation parameter in the config and in the editor
Improved life panspermia code, new probability parameters in the universe.cfg
GUI windows don't change their positions when SE window resized
Added "ModulateColor" parameter for planet scripts; can modify the color of planet textures and also modify opacity for cloud textures
Script "Exposure" parameters for surface, clouds and ocean are replaced with one global "Brightness" parameter
Script "Exposure" parameter for rings is replaced with the "Brightness" parameter
Added "stable" motion blur (blur length independent of framerate), can be adjusted in config/user.cfg or in the console
Solitary black holes particles are now invisible
Accelerated rendering of star-like particles of planets and ships
Updated SolarSys3000.sc
Removed error message if the local database file did not found
Added console variables for collision detection clamp and near plane clamp, log stamps, motion blur length, and many others (read docs/console.txt for reference)
Bug fixes:
Fixed bug with "islands" on oceanias
Fixed spacecraft and lens flare textures not loading in Immediate loading mode
Fixed a bug where catalog neutron stars could have very low temperatures
Fixed Roche limit calculations
Hacked fix of screen edge artifact of gravity lens effect
Fixed rounding errors in GUI sliders (sticking at certain points when using arrow buttons)
Fixed not saving of mouse axis settings
Fixed a bug with too high speed of clouds on tidally locked planets and moons
Fixed bug with clouds on catalog planets with low atmospheric pressure
Fixed problems with fullscreen if display resolution changed
Fixed a bug with procedural stars with infinite luminosity generated
Fixed mistake in FXAA implementation
Fixed some bugs in the planet editor
Fixed some bugs in the lens flares code
Fixed automatic binding to a planet after controlling a spacecraft
Fixed resetting of the mouse-controlled ailerons/elevator angles after using keyboard controls
Interesting timing on the release and makes a great Christmas present!! Now that this update is released time to set up a new thread called work progress .9.7.3 progress.
ENG
New site
Russian Federation 
Pirate 
United States 
Croatia 
Poland 
Sweden 
Israel 
Spain 
France 